Norway’s Ministry of Oil & Energy has said credit fears and falling oil prices gave companies cause to rethink spending, but he had not heard of any cancelled projects that might curb record-high investments expected on the Norwegian continental shelf in 2009.

“I don’t believe we’ll see an avalanche (of cancellations), but that’s one evaluation,” Energy Minister Terje Riis Johansen told Scandoil.com after challenging the Norwegian Oil Industry Association, the OLF, to “work together” with other Norwegian industries at an annual meeting late Thursday.

Johansen and other policy makers present said they expected industry to use their technological prowess to boost volumes while curbing emissions.

Yet, with numbers from record keeper Statistics Norway, OLF director Per Terje Vold was cautious in appraising investments for 2009 which are still seen reaching a record 132.8 billion kroner ($20.4 billion), with 31.4 billion ($4.83 billion) for exploration wells alone.

“The numbers behind the high national investments still allow room for after thought,” said Vold.

“The biggest investments going forward lie in fields already in operation,” he said, adding, “Investments in new fields are on the way down, and this trend will continue if we don’t make bigger finds in future.”

He said only large finds which compel independent developments secure the long-term employment opportunties the country needs.

The credit crisis was combined at the OLF event with political talk of maintaining the will for investments in in carbon capture and storage, or CCS — with mixed results. European political change on climate overshadowed the OLF conference.

On hand to speak in Oslo was Shell’s European Union emmisary Hans van der Loo. A board member in Shell Norge AS, he warned Shell saw “turbulant times” ahead for the oil industry. He also warned CCS was the measure society needed to avoid an expected “global flight into (cheap) coal” amid financial uncertainty and higher energy costs.

Though CCS was needed, he said “Some companies are using the current financial crisis — and partly environmental arguments — to say we won’t go with this year’s climate package.”

Relying on less travel and burning clean gas are still seen as good environmental moves in the oil industry, and Norwegian gas production was hailed as “clean”.

If industry was shying away from CCS while worried about credit, not so in Brussels, where the European Union agreed yesterday to jointly pursue climate goals.

Indeed, van der Loo confirmed an unheralded EU decision of a week ago to put €5 billion on five CCS demo projects. The “Ammendment 500” was made before an EU communique yesterday revealed most of the trading and political bloc was on target to meet its Kyoto targets.

ws@scandoil.com

Tags: CCS